Chapter Twenty-eight
“Denying your own son, Deborah? Now that's an all-time low,” Mrs. Lewis spat as she followed Deborah back into the house after Lynox had pulled off.
“Mom, not now.” Deborah raised her hands in frustration. “Besides, didn't you tell your grandson that you were taking him to get some ice cream?”
“Oh, this little fella right here?” She bounced her grandson in her arms. “You mean your nephew?”
Deborah turned with the quickness and they both stopped in their tracks. “Look, Mom, there is a good reason why I had to do that, but you wouldn't understand.” Deborah started walking again, heading to her home office.
“The last time I checked, there was never a good reason to tell a lie, and on top of that, the lie that denies your own sonâyour own flesh and blood. Deborah, how could you?” Mrs. Lewis's tone was laced with disappointment in her daughter. Looking at her grandson's precious face, she couldn't imagine anyone wanting to deny him. She began to tear up.
“How could I not?” Deborah flopped down in the chair at her desk, refusing to look at her mother or the child she was denying. “You spent years with a man who loved your dirty drawers. I end up with men who just want to get in mine. Well, Lynox isn't like that. Lynox is the man of every woman's dreams, and he likes me, Momma . . . a lot. Mr. Lynox Chase is chasing me. He can have almost any woman out there and he wants Deborah.”
“Okay, and I get that. So why does that mean you have to hide the fact that you have a child? This ain't V.C. Andrews's
Flowers in the Attic.
”
Deborah ignored her mother's sarcasm and answered her straight up. “Because he's not the type of man who is willing to settle down with a woman who already has kids who are not his. He told me so. He told me before I had a chance to tell him that I was one of those women who already had a kidâwho wasn't his.”
“Well that's when you should have done either one of two things, tell him the truth, or hightail it on out of there because obviously, no matter how perfect you think he is, he's going to see you as imperfect.”
Those words stung Deborah to the core. She stood from her chair. “Imperfect? So now I'm imperfect? You couldn't come up with a word more diplomatic than that?” Deborah's tone got loud. “That's my mommaâalways there to remind me what a screw-up I am. Always there to remind me how
imperfect
I am.” When Deborah enunciated the word, spittle flew out of her mouth, hitting both her mother and her son.
Mrs. Lewis calmly wiped her face, unaware that some had gotten on her grandson. “I'm not saying you are imperfect, what I'm saying is that that's how he is going to see you, so your thinking he is perfect is in vain.”
“You need me to go out to the garage and get you a shovel so you can keep piling salt onto the wound?” Deborah yelled at her mother. She was loud. But she was so used to getting loud whenever she got upset that she didn't realize just how loud she was.
“Look, calm down,” her mother ordered. “There you go again getting the boy's nerves all rattled.” She looked down at her grandson, who was now clinging to her neck, his back facing his mother.
“I don't give a darn. It's because of him I'm in this mess.”
Mrs. Lewis remained dead silent. She thanked God her grandson didn't understand the words that were coming out of his mother's mouth. But she understood them and they brought a flood of tears to her eyes. “I can't believe you just said that.” Mrs. Lewis snorted.
“Oh, don't go getting all dramatic. I didn't mean it like that,” Deborah played it down. “It's just that you are making a bigger deal out of this than it is.” Deborah walked back over to the chair and sat down. “I'm going to tell Lynox . . . when the time is right. It's just that the time keeps being all wrong. You pop up, then he pops up, and I'm just never prepared for it to go down like that.”
Mrs. Lewis thought over her next words carefully. “Then until you can tell Lynox the truth, why don't you just let the boy stay with me?” she offered. “You know I don't mind.” Mrs. Lewis waited with bated breath for a reply from her daughter.
Now that was an idea Deborah could live with. “Really? That would be helpful.” She turned around in her chair and looked at her mother. “Just a week. Just give me until the end of the week to plan on telling him.” She turned back around in her chair, staring at her computer screen, realizing just how helpful her mother's gesture would be.
“O . . . okay,” Mrs. Lewis said nervously, hoping her daughter wouldn't see through to her true intentions. “I mean, even after that, after you guys break up when you tell him, he can still stay with me so that you can get yourself together. Because I know it's going to be hard on you and all.” Mrs. Lewis should have stopped talking then, but she made the mistake and kept right on chattering away. “You'll probably be upset and not in too good of a mood. And I just don't want our little guy around to . . .” Mrs. Lewis's words trailed off once she realized Deborah was slowly turning to face her with a knowing look on her face.
“So that's what this is all about? You ain't trying to help me. You're worried I'm going to trip out and snap off or something, aren't you?”
Of course Mrs. Lewis was. She wasn't going to tell Deborah that though. Not with her mouth. But her eyes and the look on her face told it all.
Deborah stood up from the chair and went and snatched her son out of her mother's arms. “Mom, just go.”
“No, Deb, wait. That's not what I meant.”
“That's exactly what you meant. You think if Lynox leaves meâby the way, thanks for the vote of confidenceâthat I'm going to take it out on my son.”
“Well, you did just say you felt it was all his fault.”
“But I told you I didn't mean it like that.” Deborah rolled her eyes at her mother. “I can't do this with you right now. Why don't you just go and we'll talk tomorrow or something? This is too much.”
“Fine, but why don't you let me take the baby so you can get some work done?” She reached for her grandson. Deborah pulled him away.
“Naw, he's fine.”
“Deborah, please,” Mrs. Lewis practically begged.
“Mom, why are you doing that? Why are you acting like thatâlike I'm one of those crazy women who is gonna drown my kid or something?”
“Because I know how you are,” Mrs. Lewis said without hesitation.
“You know how I am?” Deborah looked her mother up and down. “Why, Mother, I'm just like you? I'm a hell raiser just like you used to be? I'm nothing like you. And even if that were true, heck, you didn't kill me by drowning, did you?” Then Deborah said under her breath, “I should be so unlucky.”
“Yeah, but I had thoughts of doing it,” Mrs. Lewis admitted and the room turned stone cold and silent.
Deborah couldn't believe the words that had just fallen from her mother's lips. The look of disbelief was plastered all over her face.
“Yes, that's right. Some days would just be so dark, thoughts of doing really bad things would enter my mind. Thoughts of doing bad things to myself, to other people.”
“Me being
other people?
” Deborah clarified.
“I was so miserable. I knew deep down inside I was making you miserable. So, for a blink of a second”âMrs. Lewis snapped her fingersâ“I imagined putting us both out of misery,” Mrs. Lewis admitted.
“If you knew you were making everybody so miserable with the way you acted, why didn't you just stop?” Deborah inquired. “I mean, sometimes I know I can get out of hand. But I can always reel things back in. I've never gotten to the point where I feel like I'm losing complete control.”
“And I hope you never do. Honestly, I hope you never get as bad off as I did. I screamed, hollered, cussed, and fussed until the day you moved out of the house. And a little bit after that. Heck, your father was pretty much working all the time so he didn't get the full wrath of me like you did.” Mrs. Lewis chuckled. “I wasn't stupid, I knew why he was the first on the list when it came time to sign up for overtime at his job. He wanted to hop on any opportunity he could to be out of that house so he wouldn't have to deal with my nasty attitude. I can't even blame him.” She shook her head. “But like I was saying, I carried on a little bit after you moved out. Only thing is, no one was there to hear it but me. Yep, that's right, I still ran around the house spewing venom out loud with no ears to hear it but myself. Then I start having those mini strokes.”
“Mom! Strokes? What are you talking about?” Deborah was shocked. This was the first she'd heard about her mother ever having mini strokes.
“Yeah, just little ones.” Mrs. Lewis shooed her hand. “I brought them on myself. After the first couple, I toned it down a little. After that last one scared me. I knew if I kept things up, I'd kill myself. I just didn't know the damage my actions were causing to my body.”
Deborah didn't even realize her eyes were full of tears. “How come I never knew this? How come you never told me?”
“Oh, you were in college. You were seeing Elton. For once in your lifeâsince you were away from meâyou were happy. You were free. You were free from me and my behaviorâfinally. I didn't want to pull you back in.”
“But you could have died,” Deborah cried. “Then how would that have made me feel?”
“But I didn't die, and that's all that matters. God let me live to see another day and to change my ways. I thank Him for that. Now I just need Him to do a work in you.”
Deborah wiped her tears. “I promise you, Mother, He's done a work in me. I'm nowhere near where I used to be. Having a child now has made me want to be better.” Deborah smiled at her son.
“And that's good to hear. But the question is, has it? Has having a child made you better? Or, in all actuality, has it made you worse?” Deborah didn't respond quickly enough for Mrs. Lewis, so she continued. “Or has it made you even more on edge? Do you fly off the handle when your son does something that kids do, like make a mess? Like not pick up toys? Like get into stuff?” Still, Mrs. Lewis didn't get an answer quick enough from her daughter. “Do you”âshe made quotation marks with her handsâ“spank and yell at him for doing what is deemed to be normal for a kid his age?”
Deborah let off a nervous laugh. “Well, yeah, but, don't all parents do that? And you said it yourself a million times, that's how black folks raise our kids. We don't do no time out and all that crap. We have to instill fear in our kids so they don't run around back sassin' and thinking they gon' whoop on us. Do you know I saw a talk show that had parents on it with kids that be putting their hands on their parents? Not nary one of them parents were black. And you know why? Because we ain't having that. We put the smack down from jump.”
“Yeah, we teach so much violence, anger, hate, and hurt that we don't even realize that at the end of the day, some of us, who operate under those conditions, are raising pit bulls. We are teaching our kids to be loud, rude, aggressive, to hit. So when I see you and how you are, I can't blame you, but I darn sure can help you.”
Deborah shook her head as if she was trying to get a graspâa clear understandingâof exactly what her mother was trying to say to her. “So do you consider me one of those pit bulls you're referring to? Do you feel as though with how you raised me, you raised me to be a pit bull?”
“If I'm being honest, I see some traits. I really do.”
Deborah wanted to fly off the handle. Her mother basically calling her a dogâa female dogâpissed her off to no end. But she knew reacting the way she really wanted to act would only prove her mother's point. “Well, thanks a lot, once again, Mother. That's what every girl wants to hear, her mother call her a female dog. It would have been better had you just come right out and called me a bitâ”
“I would never,” Mrs. Lewis said, cutting Deborah off.
“Ha, maybe now you wouldn't, but you called me out of my name, including the âB' word, enough times when I was growing up to last me a lifetime,” Deborah reminded her mother. “You know, women on the street have never called me half the names you called me, and you're my mother.”
“And I'm sorry, Deborah!” By now, Mrs. Lewis was raising her voice. She was tired of apologizing, but still had Deborah throwing the past in her face. “How many more times do you want to hear me say it?”
“Until it doesn't hurt anymore,” Deborah shouted back, startling her son, causing him to cry. “Oh shut up, you big crybaby,” she snapped at her son. “Don't nobody want to hear that mess right now.” This made the boy cry even harder.
Mrs. Lewis took her grandson from Deborah's arms and snuggled him in her arms. “It's okay. Everything is going to be okay.”
“You darn right it will be, just as soon as you quit coming over here, criticizing my parenting like you were this perfect parent.”